LABS TEST / WIFI 6 ROUTERS
Edward Chester puts six of the latest mid-range Wi-Fi 6
routers to the test
In the
air tonight
LABS TEST
How we test
W
hile there’s currently a lot of talk about mesh network
systems that use multiple Wi-Fi access points to distribute
and extend your network, such systems don’t come cheap
and for many homes, they're overkill. If you live in a little flat, a two-up,
two-down terrace or a small three-bedroom home, it’s likely that a
single, good-quality router will cover the whole house, with a mesh
system only needed if you extend into the loft or want to work at the
bottom of the garden.
As such, we’ve grabbed six conventional standalone routers,
although most of them are compatible with each company’s mesh
systems if you want to extend them, to see just what features and
performance you can get for £100-£200.
To test the routers, we set them up in the front room of a two-
storey, three-bedroom end-of-terrace house, set at a height of 40cm
from the floor and in the front corner of the living room. We then
tested the Wi-Fi speed from a PC connected to the Ethernet port of
the router to a laptop equipped with an AX1500 Wi-Fi card.
You’ll achieve considerably faster peak speed results than those
shown here if you’re using a faster client device (such as the TP-Link
TX3000 PC adaptor reviewed in issue 196), but peak speed at close
range isn’t a significant challenge for any router. Indeed, it’s range that
counts, and the laptop we used for testing represents by far the most
common type of system to connect to such routers.
Test locations were a sofa 2m away from the router in the same
room, then a bedroom one floor up and at the back of the house
(a 5m total diagonal), and finally halfway down the garden, 7m
away from the back wall of the house – about 15m total from the
router. We tested using LAN Speed Test, setting up a server on the
PC and the client on the laptop. We also used netmeter.co.uk/ping-
test to test for ping.
Outside of Wi-Fi performance, we also looked at how many
features each router offers, such as USB ports, extra buttons and
status LEDs. We also assessed the ease of setup and the web
interface, as well as the style and build quality of each unit.Contents
Asus RT-AX68U / p51
Belkin RT3200-UK / p52
Linksys MR9600 / p53
Netgear Nighthawk RAX40 / p54
Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR1000 / p55
TP-Link Archer AX73 / p56
Result graphs / p57LABS TEST / WIFI 6 ROUTERS